Reichstag Fire: pretext for dictatorship

"History doesn't repeat, but sometimes
it rhymes"
-- paraphrase of comments made by Mark Twain (American patriot and anti-imperialist)

"The government will make use
of these powers only insofar as they are essential
for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which
an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself
a limited one."
-- Adolf Hitler, promise to the Reichstag (Parliament) on the occasion
of the imposition of "temporary" dictatorship following the
"Reichstag Fire."
www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm

On February 27, 1933, after Hitler came to power,
the Nazis burned down the Reichstag (Parliament) building and blamed it
on the Communists to justify a "temporary" suspension of civil
liberties to cope with the terrorist threat. This is how Hitler became
an absolute dictator. The "temporary" suspension of freedom
lasted until Germany was in ruins.

In summary, an early incarnation of 9/11 called
"Bojinka" was intercepted and stopped in 1995 (terrorists planning
it were arrested and tortured in the Phillippines). Mainstream news sources
admit that several of the "hijackers" were given training on
US military bases. The "Able Danger" defense intelligence program
tracked Mohammed Atta and other plotters years before 9/11. On the big
day, it is extremely unlikely that the alleged hijackers would have been
able to perform the 270 degree spiral into the nearly
empty part of the Pentagon. And it wasn't
anyone Islamic who ignored copious warnings from foreign governments and
FBI agents that the attacks were imminent (what, when, where), and paralyzed
the air defenses with multiple wargames while
the actual events took place.

"Terrorism is the best
political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden
death."
-- Adolf Hitler

"In Germany, the Nazis
first came for the communists, and I did not speak up, because I was
not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up,
because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and
I did not speak up, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came
for the Catholics, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Catholic.
Then they came for me... and by that time, there was no one to speak
up for anyone."
-- Martin Niemoeller, Pastor, German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church (1892-1984)

"The government will
make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential
for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in
which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law
is in itself a limited one."
-- Adolf Hitler, promise to the Reichstag (Parliament) on the occasion
of the imposition of "temporary" dictatorship following the
Reichstag Firewww.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm

Hermann Goering, Hitler's deputy:

"Why of course the people don't want war.
Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when
the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in
England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after
all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it
is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All
you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country."

"Until we go through
it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington,
Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead
and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is
over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of
their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches,
schools demolished - only after that gruesome experience will we realize
what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina ..."
-- William Shirer, 1973 -- author, "The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich : A History of Nazi Germany"

Time to
Connect the Dots

parallels
between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11

Both events were used by an unpopular minority leader to
squelch opposition. Both events had convenient patsies - and a public
intimidated from asking questions about the details. Both events could
not have happened (physically) as the unpopular leader claimed (Mr. Van
Der Lubbe couldn't have possibly set all of the fires as quickly as the
Nazis claimed, just like there's no way that flight school dropouts flew
the plane into the nearly empty part of the Pentagon in a high speed spiral). Both events were immediately followed by a "temporary"
suspension of civil liberties to deal with the terrorist threat.

San Francisco peace rally - February 16, 2003

www.oilempire.us/pnac.htmlthe
"Project for a New American Century" - the "Mein Kampf"
of the Fourth Reich(In September 2000, the PNAC published a report that stated a
"new Pearl Harbor" would enable its plans for global domination.)

Parallels

Hitler's book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) , written in
1925 while he was in jail for an attempted coup (putsch), explicitly
described his goals for world domination, stealing Russia for German
expansion, and mass murdering Jews with poison gas. It was dismissed
as the ravings of a lunatic by most observers.

The Project for a New American Century, a think tank
comprising most of the "neo-conservatives" in key leadership
positions in the Bush / Cheney regime, published a report in September,
2000 titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses." This report,
which was endorsed by Cheney, Jeb Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the
rest of the gang, predicted that their goals of world domination would
be difficult unless there was a "new
Pearl Harbor." The PNAC report also noted "the
need for a substantial American force presence in the [Persian] Gulf
transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein"
..., and genetically engineered biological weapons "may
transform biological warfare from the
realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
This PNAC report is the "Mein Kampf" for World War IV.

Hitler rose to power under the veneer of legality,
ensuring that each tiny step toward dictatorship seemed legitimate.

The Bush regime appeared (to many) to have been legitimately
elected, if you didn't look too closely at the deliberate disenfranchisements
of Democrats in Florida. This sneaky cloaking to steps toward dictatorship
in the guise of legality is probably the strongest parallel between
the tactics of the Nazis and the tactics of the Bush regime.

Reichstag Fire (February
27, 1933) and the refusal of most Germans to question the official
story

September 11, 2001 and
the refusal of most Americans to question the official story

Enabling Act
passed after Reichstag Fire to temporarily suspend civil liberties
to deal with the terrorist threat posed by Communists. The temporary
emergency lasted until Germany was in ruins in 1945.

USA Patriot Act
passed shortly after 9/11 to temporarily suspend civil liberties to
deal with the terrorist threat posted by Islamic fundamentalists.
The proposed sequel to Patriot Act is closer to the Enabling Act in
content, but public outcry kept it from being enacted as a complete
act. If there is another 9/11 type incident, Patriot II is more likely
to be passed. Among other provisions, it would remove citizenship
from convicted terrorists, similar to the removal of German citizenship
of German Jews, a key "legal" step toward their expulsion
to concentration and death camps.

Dachau (earliest internment camp,
which incarcerated political opponents, it was not a "death camp,"
at least in early days)

Guantanamo indefinite detention camp,
built by Haliburton, President Cheney's company

Propaganda ministry

Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter,
etc.

Kristallnacht (1938), a deliberate
effort to destroy Jewish history in Germany

Destruction of Iraqi museums (2003),
which destroyed much ancient history, especially relics that were
pre-Islamic, part of the cultural heritage of humanity

Invasion of Czechoslovakia, aggression
that the other "great powers" condemned but did nothing
to stop

Invasion of Iraq using the excuse
that Iraq had attacked, or was about to attack US (2003)

Excuse that Poland was attacking Germany and therefore
must be counter-attacked in self-defense (1939)

US attack on Iran, a country that recently made large
business deals with China, India and Germany - expanding the Iraq
war to Iran could trigger a much larger conflict

Reluctance of the opposition to organize to restore
democracy, several efforts were made to topple the dictator but all
were half-hearted, poorly organized and none (obviously) succeeded.

The establishment opposition to Bush, Cheney and the
other gangsters involved in the crimes of 9/11 and Iraq has been weak
and ineffective. Few Democratic leaders were willing to publicly question
the vote fraud of 2004 despite overwhelming evidence that the election
was rigged in many states (not only Ohio). While there has been violence
directed against some opposition politicians (Paul
Wellstone, John Kennedy, etc), the danger
in the US for dissidents is miniscule compared with Nazi Germany and
there is much more freedom of speech and movement and association.

On February 27, 1933, four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor,
the Reichstag building, Germany's parliament was destroyed in a fire.
Hitler took full advantage of this 9/11-like calamity to whip up fear
of "terrorists" - in this case, Communist terrorists - and
to impose legislation curtailing the rights of German citizens. The
Germans, by and large, acquiesced.
In Defying Hitler: A Memoir, Sebastian Haffner provides an eyewitness
account of those days in Berlin:

With sheepish submissiveness the German people accepted that, as
a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom
and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution; as though it followed
as a necessary consequence.... more than one [of my colleagues] hinted
that they had doubts about the official version; but none of them
saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from now on, one's
telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened, and one's desk might
be broken into. (pp 121-122)

Van der Lubbe was the patsy in the Reichstag fire. Seventy years later
you have some "ex-CIA" types still utilizing him in this way.
As well they might, considering what's at stake.
According to historians I've read, Van der Lubbe was *an* arsonist at
the Reichstag, but not the lone arsonist and definitely not the arsonist
responsible for the conflagration. More on why he was on the scene that
night, below.
But for argument's sake allow for a moment that he was the *lone* arsonist.
Even if he *were,* it is misleading to make that assertion in such a way
as to suggest little or no Nazi involvement in the events of February
27, 1933.
Everything else indicates the Nazis were the only beneficiaries of the
fire, as iconic in its day as 9/11 in ours.
First take the possibility he was the lone arsonist. He was below par
mentally and therefore a person easily duped. It is interesting -- especially
in light of the large body of circumstantial evidence pointing to Nazi
complicity -- that those who claim or suggest that Van der Lubbe was the
lone arsonist seldom if ever show any interest into whether he might have
been manipulated. In any event, the "lone arsonist" theory does
not conform to the facts.

Consider this from William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of The
Third Reich (Touchstone Edition, 1990, p. 192-):

From Goering's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage,
built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building.
Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become
the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on
the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they quickly scattered
gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly
back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted
Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had
made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building
and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was
a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days
before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted
to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try
the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist
who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do
seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The
idea for the fire almost certainly originated at the top with Goebbels
and Goering. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of
the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that 'it was Goebbels
who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fre,' and Rudolph Diels,
the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that 'Goering knew exactly
how the fire was to be started' and had ordered him 'to prepare, prior
to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after
it.' General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during
the early part of World War II, recalled at Nurembrg how on one occasion
Goering had boasted of his deed.

At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation
turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value.
I heard with my own ears when Goering interrupted the conversation
and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag
is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh
with the flat of his hand.

Shirer writes (p. 193): "Van der Lubbe, it seems clear, was a
dupe of the Nazis. He was encouraged to try to set the Reichstag on
fire. But the main job was to be done -- without his knowledge of course
-- by the storm troopers. Indeed it was established at the subsequent
trial at Leipzig that the Dutch half-wit did not possess the means to
set so vast a building on fire so quickly. Two and a half minutes after
he entered, the great central hall was fiercely burning. He had only
his shirt for tinder. The main fires, according to the testimony of
experts at the trial, had been set with considerable quantities of chemicals
and gasoline."
Consider that Vice-chancellor von Papen recalled that when he arrived
at the blazing parliament buildings Goering was already on the scene
shouting: "This is a communist crime..."
Shirer writes: "...beyond reasonable doubt it was the Nazis who
planned the arson and carried it out for their own political ends."

Indeed, the more you study the Reichstag fire, its origins and uses,
the more you see what a stunning parallel to it 9/11 is -- on the face
of it, as well as in some of the intricacies.

My Briefing with Ray McGovern
George Tenet, Iraq, Neo-Conservatives, Vietnam and 911 through the eyes
of a 27-year CIA analyst

“I saw it in Vietnam,” he says. “And usually it was
the President himself or the White House that was responsible in the
final analysis. Think Gulf of Tonkin.”
McGovern is referring to the non-event that became the rationale for
the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
“We knew that there was no incident that night," McGovern
says. "McGeorge Bundy [Lyndon Johnson's National Security Advisor]
knew that there was no incident that night. And yet LBJ with his towering
presence, his total power — corrupting totally — leaned
over and said ‘McGeorge, are you going up to the hill to sell
this resolution?’ Bundy admitted on McNeil Lehrer Newshour, one
painful show: ‘So, I went. I went up and I lied to Congress.’
“So, it’s happened before. What’s different this time
is that we have a situation where, over a two-year period, an incredibly
clever orchestrated campaign was waged to exploit the trauma of the
American people — the trauma of 911. To exploit it in such a way
as to achieve the aims of the…“
McGovern stops to find the word.
“I don’t call them neo-conservatives," he says, "because
I’m conservative. I call them neo-fascists, because that’s
what they are. And what these neo-fascists did was see 911 as a golden
opportunity.”
Holy Benito! Neo-fascists? I ask McGovern if he's using Mussolini’s
definition of fascism. As Il Duce said, "Fascism should more properly
be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate
power." Think Halliburton U.S.A.
McGovern agrees, but adds more.“I’m also talking about the
measures that were taken in Nazi Germany after the fire that burned
down the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, in 1933. It
was that fire that allowed Hitler to institute his own legislation."
McGovern draws a parallel between 911 and the Reichstag fire. After
claiming that the Communists committed arson, Hitler used the incident
to declare a state of emergency and suspend some of the constitutionally
protected personal freedoms of German citizens. These rights included
freedom of speech and assembly.
“Very much like post-911 legislation instituted here in this country
to curtail civil liberties,” McGovern says, "to make people
feel that if they speak out against what is happening, they are unpatriotic."

Reichstag fire, burning of the Reichstag (parliament)
building in Berlin, on the night of Feb. 27, 1933, a key event in the
establishment of the Nazi dictatorship and widely believed to have been
contrived by the newly formed Nazi government itself to turn public opinion
against its opponents and to assume emergency powers. Hitler had secured
the chancellorship after the elections of November 1932, but his Nazi
Party had not won an overall majority. He therefore obtained Cabinet consent
to fix new elections for March 5, 1933. Meanwhile, his propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels, is supposed to have devised the scheme whereby 10 agents
led by Karl Ernst were to gain access to the Reichstag through a tunnel
leading from the official residence of Hermann Goring, Reichstag president
and Hitler's chief minister, who was then to conduct an official investigation,
which would fix responsibility for the fire on the Communists. The supposed
arsonist was a Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, whom some have claimed
was brought to the scene of the crime by Nazi agents. Others have contended
that there was no proof of Nazi complicity in the crime, but that Hitler
merely capitalized on van der Lubbe's independent act. The fire is the
subject of continued debate and research.
On Feb. 28, 1933, the day after the fire, Hitler's dictatorship began
with the enactment of a decree "for the Protection of the People
and the State," which dispensed with all constitutional protection
of political, personal, and property rights. Though the ensuing elections
still did not give the Nazis an outright majority, they were able to persuade
the Reichstag to pass an Enabling Act (March
23) whereby all its legislative powers were transferred to the Reich Cabinet
by a vote of 444 to 94, so sanctioning the dictatorship. A feature of
the ensuing arson trial, at which van der Lubbe was convicted, was the
acquittal of the Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov after a strong defense.

Additional Information About the Reichstag Fire
Shortly before election day, the Reichstag building went up in flames-most
probably at the initiative of the Nazis themselves. Hearing about the
arson, Hitler reportedly first said, "Now I've got them in my hands."
The Nazis exploited the torching of the Reichstag to describe the act
as a manifestation of an attempted Communist putsch and, on the basis
of this allegation, to legitimize an all-out war against the Communists.
That very night, Goering declared a supreme state of emergency throughout
his police forces. The Nazis rounded up 4,000 political activists, mostly
Communists, but including several non-Communist intellectuals. The headquarters
and newspaper editorial boards of the Social-Democratic party were taken
over. The heads of the Communist party in the Reichstag turned themselves
over to the police voluntarily to prove that the charges were groundless.
The next morning, Hitler presented President von Hindenburg with an emergency
order, ready for his signature, that voided important basic civil rights,
expanded substantially the list of crimes that carried the death penalty,
and vastly boosted the central government's powers to pressure the individual
states. The police were now empowered to imprison suspects and extend
remand indefinitely at their discretion. They could keep relatives utterly
uninformed about the reason for the arrest and the fate of the imprisoned
person. They could prevent lawyers or other people from visiting detainees
and reviewing their files. No court was entitled to intervene. The emergency
order, "for the protection of the people and the State," was
augmented that very day by an order "against treason and treachery."
The two orders became the basis of jurisprudence and the foundation stones
of the Nazi dictatorship.
Thus, the emergency order of February 28, 1933, read:

"Paragraphs 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 in the German
Reich Constitution are provisionally null and void. Accordingly, the
restrictions on personal freedom and the right to express opinions freely,
including freedoms of the press, association, and assembly; monitoring
of letters, cables, and telephone calls, searches of homes, and expropriation
of property, and restrictions thereon, are hereby revoked within the
limits previously stipulated in the law."

The order, to be in effect until 1945, replaced constitutional rule
with a perpetual state of emergency.

2-27-1933
Just days before the crucial election of March 5th, a fire destroys the
main chamber of the Reichstag in Berlin; the Nazis immediately declare
that this is the work of the Communists. Minister without Portfolio Hermann
Göring shouts to the new Gestapo chief: "This is the beginning
of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no
mercy. Every Communist official must be shot , where he is found. Every
Communist deputy must this very night be strung up." [The following
day Hitler persuaded President von Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree
that suspended seven crucial articles of the Constitution: freedom of
the person, freedom of expression, freedom to assemble, secrecy of mail
and other forms of communication, sanctity of property and of the home
as a place of refuge. Trucks of brown-shirted SA (Sturm Absteilung) thugs
swarmed over Berlin and the provinces, breaking into homes, and carting
victims off to be beaten and tortured. Over four thousand Communist leaders
and Social Democrats were arrested, including many members of the Reichstag.
The opposition press was closed down, and ten-year prison sentences were
given to any person providing news to foreign governments that was "not
in the best interests of Germany". Opposition rallies were banned
or broken up by bullies; only the Nazis and their Nationalist Party allies
were able to campaign unmolested. It was widely believed, in Germany and
abroad, that the fire had been set by the Nazis themselves.]
The fire was ostensibly set by Marinus van der Lubbe, a dim-witted Dutch
communist who liked to play with matches. He was picked up by the SA after
he had been heard boasting in a bar that he would set fire to the Reichstag.
They encouraged him with his plans, but first a group of SA men (later
eliminated by Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives, 6-30-34) carried
quantities of gasoline and self-igniting chemicals through an underground
passage from Göring's headquarters to the Reichstag which they scattered
in strategic places. At van der Lubbe's trial in Leipzig it was clear
that he could not have set such fierce fires and in so many places simultaneously
with the meager materials he had brought. He was, nevertheless, convicted
and decapitated. Shirer, Rise and Fall, pp. 192-195; Sherwin and Markmann,
One Week in March, (1961) pp. 81-83.www.janrainwater.com/htdocs/Reichstag.htm

At 8 o'clock Wednesday night, the Sikh in a blue turban
in the subway change booth at 42nd Street gave me a little wave and I
waved back. Suddenly, he was a front-line soldier in a war. I designate
the subway at Times Square as a prime target in America in the war with
Iraq.
I had just been at the public library, where I discovered the speech that
started World War II. I print much of it here. It is darkly familiar to
what we have been hearing here, when for the first time in American history
we became all the things we ever hated and invaded another country. Herewith
the speech:

Address by Adolph Hitler to the Reichstag, Sept. 1, 1939.

For months we have suffered under the torture of a problem which
the Versailles Diktat created -- a problem that has deteriorated until
it becomes intolerable for us ...
As always, I attempted to bring about, by the peaceful method of making
proposals for revision, an alteration of this intolerable position.
It is a lie when the outside world says that we only tried to carry
our revisions through by pressure. Fifteen years before the National
Socialist Party came to power there was the opportunity of carrying
out these revisions by peaceful settlements and understanding. On
my own initiative I have, not once but several times, made proposals
for the revision of intolerable conditions. All these proposals, as
you know, have been rejected -- proposals for the limitation of armaments
and, even if necessary, disarmament, proposals for the limitation
of warmaking, proposals for the elimination of certain methods of
modern warfare ... You know the endless attempts I made for peaceful
clarification and understanding of the problem of Austria, and later
of the problem of the Sudatenland, Bohemia and Moravia. It was all
in vain.
It is impossible to demand that an impossible position should be cleared
up by peaceful revision, and at the same time constantly reject peaceful
revision. It is also impossible to say that he who undertakes to carry
out the revisions for himself transgresses a law, since the Versailles
Diktat is not law to us.
In the same way, I have tried to solve the problems of Danzig, the
Corridor, etc., by proposing a peaceful discussion. That the problems
had to be solved was clear. It is quite understandable to us that
the time when the problem was to be solved had little interest for
the Western Powers. But time is not a matter of indifference to us
...
For four months I have calmly watched developments, although I never
ceased to give warnings. In the last few days I have increased these
warnings ...
I made one more final effort to accept a proposal for mediation on
the part of the British government. They proposed, not that they themselves
should carry out the negotiations, but rather that Poland and Germany
should come into direct contact and once more pursue negotiations.
I must declare that I accepted this proposal and worked out a basis
for these negotiations which are known to you. For two whole days
I sat in my government and waited to see whether it was convenient
for the Polish government to send a plenipotentiary or not. Wednesday
night they did not send us a plenipotentiary, but instead informed
us through their ambassador that they were still considering whether
and to what extent they were in a position to go into the British
proposals. The Polish government also said they would inform Britain
of their decision.
Deputies, if the German government and its leader patiently endured
such treatment Germany would deserve only to disappear from the political
stage. But I am wrongly judged if my love of peace and my patience
are mistaken for weakness or even cowardice. I, therefore, decided
Wednesday night and informed the British government that in these
circumstances I can no longer find any willingness on the part of
the Polish government to conduct serious negotiations with us.
The other European states understand in part our attitude. I should
like all to thank Italy, which throughout has supported us, but you
will understand for the on of this struggle ... we will carry out
this task ourselves.
This night for the first time, Polish regular soldiers fired on our
territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire and from
now on bombs will be met with bombs. Whoever fights with poison gas
will be fought with poison gas. Whoever departs from the rules of
humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same ... until
the safety, security of the Reich and its rights are secured.
***